Chinese startups Zhipu AI and MiniMax, considered the main competitors of OpenAI in China, have passed listing hearings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The companies have for the first time disclosed their financial performance, preparing for a fierce battle for the title of China's "first public large language model developer." This is reported by Bloomberg, writes UNN.
Details
Despite their "unicorn" status, the financial results of Chinese players are still significantly inferior to their Western counterparts.
Zhipu AI (graduates of Tsinghua University) in 2024 received revenue of $44.4 million (312.4 million yuan).
MiniMax (focused on video editing and AI companions) declared $30.5 million.
For comparison, OpenAI's expected annual revenue this year reaches $13 billion, and Anthropic's – $9 billion. However, Chinese companies have much more modest valuations – approximately $4 billion each.
Path to listing and investors
Both startups are supported by tech giants Alibaba and Tencent. The stock market debut is expected to take place in January 2026, which will allow the companies to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for further model development.
These companies are in a fierce race to become the first domestic generative artificial intelligence startups to go public
Zhipu AI is currently focused on creating solutions for government agencies, while MiniMax is actively scaling consumer products, such as the Talkie app, which already has millions of users.